This article is not uncommon. Certainly, Taggart will get to show, what I believe, is one of his strongest attributes, that is, taking decisive action to problems. (I digress, but I did not like Taggart as a Coach and thought his decision making policy was not stellar, but do applaud him for taking action when needed.) But this article shows a bigger problem, Who is really "parenting" these immature individuals that allow this kind of mess to develop. It is judgmental on my part, but situations such as is described demands that radical acceptance knows this will be the outcome. If this was not a high profile kid, this story would never have been printed locally much less nationally, but he is a public figure and someone has to be educating them that the spotlight will be on them and if don't want to slip, don't go where it is slippery because that spotlight will quickly be turned off and no one will care.

.Florida State quarterback Deondre Francois was interviewed by police, but not charged, after a verbal altercation with his live-in girlfriend turned physical Tuesday evening, according to a Tallahassee Police Department incident report.

The report, which was released just after noon on Wednesday, states that police were called to the home by Francois after he and his girlfriend began arguing and he tried to remove her from the house, which sits less than a mile from FSU's campus.

Francois and his girlfriend provided police with very different statements regarding the incident.

The following details are from the TPD incident report:

Francois said he was relaxing at home with friend and FSU teammate Zaquandre White when his girlfriend returned home and brought up a previous argument. Francois said he asked his girlfriend to leave, at which point she became angry and began "breaking things." He said she threw a vase across the room, causing it to break as well.

Francois said he tried to pick his girlfriend up by wrapping his arms around her "like a hug" to stop her from causing damage and to remove her from the house. But he said he let her go when she started to swing at him and said she would call police to report him for domestic violence.

Francois also requested that the responding police officers take photographs of the scene and the damaged property, which they did, according to the report.

Francois' girlfriend, who is not being named by Warchant because she is an alleged victim in the case, gave an entirely different version of the events. While saying she did not want to press charges against Francois, she said the incident started when she talked to one of his friends and he told her she couldn't speak to other guys. She said Francois broke down the door to her bedroom, picked her up and threw her to the ground, causing a cut on her forearm, and also tried to remove her from the house.

She also told police that she was about nine weeks' pregnant with Francois baby and that she had told him previously about the pregnancy. The girlfriend then asked the police to take a photo of her injury, which they did.

Francois disputed his girlfriend's account about the cut and said she sustained it when she broke the vase. He also acknowledged that his girlfriend had told him she was pregnant, but added that he didn't believe her because she has lied in the past and has shown no signs of being pregnant.

The only witness to the incident was White, who backed up Francois' account of the events. White provided a written statement and said that Francois only touched his girlfriend in an attempt to stop her from breaking things and to defend himself when she swung at him.

Based on the "conflicting statements and lack of independent witnesses," the responding officers stated that there was not enough evidence to make an arrest for battery. The report states that Francois agreed to leave the house for the night and let his girlfriend stay there.

The case is being considered "open/inactive."

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MY COMMENTS...young folk drama...not much here to see.

Yet the press will play their narrative...and a gazillion football board fans will think that the young guy is a monster being supported by a program...

It is a story that that is repeated a thousand times a day among young people.....intense emotions that lead to violent acts. And, this is my opinion only, the guy is always suspect even when it is the woman who is violent.

Two years ago, FSU dismissed a 19 year old quarterback who slapped a woman in a bar who he did not know after she hit him...young guy..fSU career over. Now he is at FAU.

Deondre Johnson...

She objected to him sitting next to her..watch video...he claims she also used racial language.

And...coaches are coaches...they are not babysitters, 24 hour parents...FSU, like most programs, has support programs, indoctrination, social skill training...but, you can't stop emotions and young folks from being stupid....any more than we can stop drunk driving. And having 85 young men, many acclimated to a street culture that is not our middle class culture, and expecting them to not have minor incidents is unrealistic....they are on a whole, thank God, better behaved than the white bread fraternity boys.

Heck...how many 18 and 19 year old Marines did I see get in fights and other such nonsense...Even a paragon like myself, at age 19 spent a night in the Ensenada hoosegow, down ole Mexico way, for participating in a bar fight that left some minor injuries (Marines and sailors)...an ugly mix.

The expectations of a school are enormous...should athletes be any different than the other 40,000 kids on campus?

It is 7:05 AM now and you have already had your morning constitution and having a moment of meditation of how grateful you are to have had your morning grits and a tinge of pity that the rest of us didn't. Pity quickly turns into a smirk and a quickly dismissed thought, "Serves them right, darn Yankees."

I do not disagree with anything you said except to answer the question "should athletes be any different than the other 40,000 kids on campus?"

The answer is, "Yes." But because you already know what I will say and I am heading to get my soft boiled eggs and toast with a glass of V-8 juice and a handful of pills that cure "stuff" I don't even have...which may be why I don't have it, I will end.

Or as we said in the early 70's, "Peace Out."

As I age it is hard to tell if I am inspired by reasoned passion or arthritic knees; most likely it is arthritic reasoning.

But we know they are going to be in the spotlight and we know they are not prepared. Prime example, Alex Rodriguez...given him 26 million bucks at the age of 19 or 20 and expect him to be this mature responsible person.

If you are going to thrust these kids into the arena, we need to give them the tools and that is not the same as the kid that just attends classes.

As I age it is hard to tell if I am inspired by reasoned passion or arthritic knees; most likely it is arthritic reasoning.

MylesDer wrote:I remember this "controversy" like it was yesterday. I'm worried that we're at a point where we can't look at things objectively as a society any more.

I do believe you are right about this. Things seem harder to acclimate the social tolerance of general public interaction when the blurred line continues to move toward instantaneous judgement. The rules tend to change as to what is deemed acceptable with each day that passes by, and no one is told they are enacting themselves to be socially irresponsible, until after they are being prosecuted, because the rules changed as a reaction to the incident.

It's frustrating.

The only eyebrow I would raise in the Police Statement taken, is that, when the Vase was broken, it was "Thrown Across the Room, breaking against the Wall".

And yet, we are to believe that the Same Person Stated, the Cut on Her Arm, "She Sustained It when She Broke the Vase."

The Vase that broke on the other side of the room from her.

hmm...

Anyhow ---- Welcome to the Board MylesDer ----

I hope you like what you see here. You joined at a relatively slow time of the year for the Forum, as we are more active during the Season. But we are all paying attention even when we're not posting. Most of us scan the page at least once a day. So feel free to say something, as we are always interested in a fresh perspective.

...

Cane...[__]

"It is only impossible until it has been accomplished." ... then it becomes standardized ...and then it becomes regulation ...

Success is measured by results; whereas Character is measured through the means by which one achieves those results . . .

It seems the Rapture did come for one worthy soul:In Memory of Grandpa Howdy

College Students today are in a different position than they were in yesteryear. College Athletes have greater pressure than many in the student body. (I don't know the facts of the case I cited, not the point, the point is, it made news, there was an issue and some of the facts made the incident very predictable. Read this article about Yale University as an indication of how college students feel. Not like previously. A class with no grades, pass or fail has 1200 students, a fourth of the students.

if you are concerned about college athletics...it isn't the outburst of a 19 year old with his girl friend we need to be talking about...

We need to talk about the systematic protections afforded folks by institutions....the apparent culture at Michigan State....

My God...160 young girls and women molested by Nassar...an investigation was finally started 17 years after the first complaint was made to a Michigan State coach....and that obfuscation was across football as well...including incidents by the coaching staff.

"Over the past three years, MSU has three times fought in court -- unsuccessfully -- to withhold names of athletes in campus police records. The school also has deleted so much information from some incident reports that they were nearly unreadable. In circumstances in which administrators have commissioned internal examinations to review how they have handled certain sexual violence complaints, officials have been selective in releasing information publicly. In one case, a university-hired outside investigator claimed to have not even generated a written report at the conclusion of his work. And attorneys who have represented accusers and the accused agree on this: University officials have not always been transparent, and often put the school's reputation above the need to give fair treatment to those reporting sexual violence and to the alleged perpetrators.

"Whatever protocol or policy was in place, whatever frontline staff might normally be involved in response or investigation, it all got kind of swept away and it was handled more by administration [and] athletic department officials," says Allswede, who worked at MSU for seven years. "It was all happening behind closed doors. ... None of it was transparent or included people who would normally be involved in certain decisions."

My example was poor. Does not mean it is irrelevant. Of course, we need to talk about society in general. Your example, the multitudinous revelations of abuse has brought public concern, we will see if it last or if money will win.

I am not looking for a patriarchal system, but I also think it is time for those in charge to take charge. Traditional colleges are becoming buggy whips. And maybe that is a good thing.

As I age it is hard to tell if I am inspired by reasoned passion or arthritic knees; most likely it is arthritic reasoning.

billybud wrote:if you are concerned about college athletics...it isn't the outburst of a 19 year old with his girl friend we need to be talking about...

We need to talk about the systematic protections afforded folks by institutions....the apparent culture at Michigan State....

My God...160 young girls and women molested by Nassar...an investigation was finally started 17 years after the first complaint was made to a Michigan State coach....and that obfuscation was across football as well...including incidents by the coaching staff.

"Over the past three years, MSU has three times fought in court -- unsuccessfully -- to withhold names of athletes in campus police records. The school also has deleted so much information from some incident reports that they were nearly unreadable. In circumstances in which administrators have commissioned internal examinations to review how they have handled certain sexual violence complaints, officials have been selective in releasing information publicly. In one case, a university-hired outside investigator claimed to have not even generated a written report at the conclusion of his work. And attorneys who have represented accusers and the accused agree on this: University officials have not always been transparent, and often put the school's reputation above the need to give fair treatment to those reporting sexual violence and to the alleged perpetrators.

"Whatever protocol or policy was in place, whatever frontline staff might normally be involved in response or investigation, it all got kind of swept away and it was handled more by administration [and] athletic department officials," says Allswede, who worked at MSU for seven years. "It was all happening behind closed doors. ... None of it was transparent or included people who would normally be involved in certain decisions."

I agree that the MSU example is really bad. Things like this, to me, really speak to "lack of institutional control". This isn't a small cover up worked out by a coach and a cop somewhere. It isn't something that a coach and AD whitewashed because of a misdemeanor offense by a student athlete. It is out and out corruption to the point where they even decided that molestation of young girls didn't rise to the level that they needed to turn themselves in. This is exactly the same kind of stuff that got Penn State in trouble. Not the fact that Sandusky molested kids, but that coaches and administrators knew and covered it up. Penn State or Michigan State can't be responsible for the acts of Sandusky or Nasser until they find out about it, but when they find out they are as responsible are the offender for anything that happens. I also very the academic fraud at North Carolina as an institutional issue. It doesn't have the ick factor of MSU and PSU, but it is still about fraud and cover up. The same kind of thing is what got Tressel fired at Ohio State. Not the fact that his players gave autographs for tattoos, but the fact that he knew and pretended he didn't. The list of offenses go on and on and most do not rise to the level of institutional control like the MSU, PSU, and UNC issues, but the little issues can tend to lead to bigger issues. Once you look away once it gets easier the next time. Then when you have lots of little things to hide and something happens with a guy like Nasser, it all comes to the surface - too late to run and hide anymore.